Back on the ship, I ate, drank and yes, I even played bingo with some of the most colorful characters I've ever met -- the kind of characters Chatwin might have written about had he ever sailed around Patagonia.

We plan years, marriages, trips, etc. We try to watch it with arbitrary numbers, letters and symbols for our own Western conscience. But life doesn't happen like that. Life happens in moments. Life happens now, passing in seconds, minutes and hours.